0.0.11 Announcer voiceovers, results UI and two brand new ability pickups!

This update revolved around completing the gameplay loop with a results screen and improving the feedback to the player via announcer style voiceovers. In the first Phaseshift I feel I went a bit overkill with results screens having one for results, championship results, stats, XP screen and a final overview. As PS:E's design philosophy is a bit more online focused, I want the UI/UX to be quick and snappy and not overly bloated like Phaseshift 1's was. 

Announcer Voiceover

For the voiceover, as always I wanted to invoke that PS1 nostalgia. A little bit cringy and over the top, but made you feel good when the announcer was shouting at you saying you did something good. As a massive fan of the Unreal Tournament series, I wanted something that really put you in the competitive mindset, and updating you on your progress. My friend who is a voice actress was happy to provide some samples of her voice and they fit the game great.

The main difficulty was overlapping samples when you triggered multiple samples. I created a queuing system with FMOD so that added samples had a priority, higher priority samples effectively jumped the queue and got played first. 

Adding FX to the samples playback was super fun, got it sounding very radio and almost robotic like with heavy compression and EQ use.

Post Session UI

The basic premise was a simple results screen, nothing more at this stage. I was keen on finishing off the gameplay loop and providing the player with feedback on where they finished and how well they did relative to everyone else. The results screen is simple, but functional, the rows cascade in when a pilot has finished a race, showing their portrait, name, team name, best lap and the points accrued. In the interest of keeping things fair, points are awarded depending on the number of pilots that participated and finishing position. This should keep overall points stats relatively fair. The maximum points awarded is 1st place with 20 pilots for a total of 30 points. As there are more pilots, more of a gap for maximum attained points is awarded.

The idea over time is to provide more utility; so a championship leaderboard if applicable, and a voting screen to pick the next track in certain modes. (Kind of like in GTAV when you pick the next mission). Rewards and XP will be shown via pop ups and notifications to keep things rolling - especially when online.

New Abilities

It felt natural to add some more abilities to add some variation to the AI, as well as reducing the amount of times I hear Homing Missiles firing off, that was getting annoying!

Months ago I created an ability board of potential pickups I could add to the game. Looking at what worked with Phaseshift 1 as well as other games in the genre, I tried to create a list of abilities that would be fun, and help keep the pack racing together. In the initial design I wanted to make sure that manual aiming (as was in Phaseshift 1) was a thing of the past. This was where you had to line up your vehicle and fire weapons at the opponents. This had a very high skill ceiling bit meant tracks had to be created in certain ways to allow weapons to be more or less balanced in all cases. This time around I wanted to make sure the racing was at the forefront; and combat was secondary. All projectile type weapons were to be at least lock on with minimal lining up shots, keeping the racing line was key. 

As I had Homing Missiles and the Barrier already in the game at this point, I wanted to add some more direct fire abilities (Homing Missile is only just a bit quicker than a non-boosting vehicle, and is lock on) and some aggressive close combat weaponry.

Laser Cannon

Aside from building the AI, creating the abilities is probably my favourite part of PS:E. Trying to create utterly unique abilities that fit a certain playstyle is super fun. I wanted the Laser Cannon much like the Plasma Cannon from a PS1 game called Firebugs. This style of weapon has been replicated in the spiritual sequel GRIP in the form of the Raptor. 

I wanted to make sure I re-created the 'spool up' effect accurately, the 'gatling' gun begins to rotate and the rate of fire is slow. When it starts spooling up at max speed the rate fire increases to a steady rate. I found that using an AnimationCurve in conjunction with a specially made ScriptableObject class worked beautifully, as even when powering up the ability (increasing number of shots per pickup use) the spool effect remained with the same curve, the rate of fire increased allowing for more damage output. This also gave the ability a more chaotic, powerful aesthetic. Each level of Laser Cannon was the same amount of time, just offered more ammo at high levels. The AnimationCurve smoothed out over time to preserve the feel while improving damage output.

The ability also uses the same lock on effect as the Homing Missile - it finds targets within a cone and fires on the best target - usually nearest with the shallowest angle. The ability is great at destroying scenery and environment objects as its rate of fire obliterates any static objects. The trick is hitting moving ones, making the Laser Cannon a lot more powerful on the straights and close up. 

Super pleased with how this one came out, it still has some Phaseshift DNA from the Gatling Laser but a bit more usable when in a racing situation.

Plasma Vortex

Let's be frank, the Plasma Vortex is a poor person's green shells. Functionally identical to Orbit Plasma from Phaseshift, just with a more PS1 granulated texture particles. Orbit Plasma from Phaseshift was super fun to play with, you can be super aggressive and act like a roadblock to pilots behind if they have low health. 

Simply rotating plasma discs of doom, upon collision they deal damage to the collided object. On higher levels the number of discs increase, and on the final level each ring gets an area of effect. They also spin quicker to help with hitting the target. Massively fun ability that allows for super aggressive play styles (and I think it looks cool!)